Looking back at La Raza Unida’s contributions on its 40th

Forty years ago yesterday, “Mexican Americans made political history,” by establishing their own independent political party called La Raza Unida Party.

In a piece written for the Progressive Media Project, Munoz offers insight into the movement’s origins — a 1969 radical Chicano youth conference — and its contributions to Latino and U.S. politics. It’s interesting reading.

While La Raza Unida gained control of Crystal City’s council, elsewhere, it had little success, Munoz said, and moderate Mexican American leadership had a lot to do with that. Munoz names San Antonio congressman Henry B. Gonzalez, in particular.

But the party also opened “doors for Mexican Americans into the two-party political system.” The great majority of them went into the Democratic Party.

“More significantly,” Munoz writes, “the party contributed to the political awakening of the Mexican American people and other Latinos.”

Read the entire commentary here, and read more about La Raza Unida here and here.